~ wonderings – the essence of life and prayer

Monthly Archives: April 2020

Each Earth Day for fifty years now we have taken a look at what is happening around us with an eye to the long term health of the planet, not just the people but other life forms, plants and animal. We look at the ecosystems in which they live and wonder how things have changed in the past year, and what it suggests might be coming in the future. This year is different.

Had we predicted what a 50th celebration would be like last October, we would have imagined a very different experience that what has unfolded. We would have expected ongoing discussions about all types of pollution, the impact of conservation and recycling, what can be done to reduce our carbon footprints, preserving the quality of soil, water, and air. We would not have expected that large segments of people in countries around the globe would be staying home to avoid the contagion of a deadly virus.

So what has changed? What do we see now? I’d like to suggest that we think about this time not just to observe what is but also to see it as offering us an opportunity…. and opportunity for a change of perspective.

Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures: People in India are getting clear views of the Himalayas for the first time in decades. Dolphins swim up canals in Venice. Deer roam the streets of Nara, Japan. Turkeys gobble while walking the streets of Boston. Coyotes cross the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Noise in major cities has been reduced by 30 decibels allowing city residents to hear birdsong they’d forgotten and hear the sound of birds in flight. The reduction of stress improve the ability of wildlife to reproduce and increases their sense of safety.

It would be shortsighted to look at this and see it as a quick fix to the environmental problems that confront us. We know many of us want only to return to what was familiar. We want to return quickly and fully to life as we experienced it before. We know there are concerns that we will do just that and that some will use of this downtime to discontinue the following of best practices in environmental standards and relax monitoring of compliance with protections for wildlife. Compound that with the worry that today’s challenges to the world economy will leave fewer resources to address the climate crisis. Those are very real concerns and will require our diligent attention, but while we wait and wonder I’d like to suggest we take another approach.

What if we look of the reports of improved air and water quality simply as a sign that such progress is possible? What if we take this opportunity to rethink our relationship with the planet, all its elements and life forms? As we consider this relationship let’s think of it in light of what we value and miss the most during this time of confinement. Let’s listen to the sound of earth breathing. How might we change of habits and our consumption if we keep the health and wellbeing of the entire planet in mind?

This week Yes Magazine published an opinion piece by its editor David Korten, “From Emergency to Emergence.” Korten says,

“The combination of the two emergencies [coronavirus and climate change] is helping us awaken to the profound implications of the simple truth that we are living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth. Our well-being depends on Earth’s well-being. Life is the goal, community is essential, and money is only a tool.”*

I believe that the actions suggested here align with the words we read from the psalmist and Isaiah. The one who set creation in motion,who flung stars and planets into space creating the galaxies and bringing life to the world and its inhabitants calls us to care for those myriad interconnected component parts. Let us take this time to remember the great and wondrous gift and to reset our plans and priorities to reflect our gratitude for all we have received.

Where was Thomas that Easter day when the others heard the news of Jesus’ resurrection? Where was Thomas when Jesus stood among them alive again?

Perhaps Thomas was foraging for supplies, or for the word on the street. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to be inside. Perhaps he needed to walk… as the one who paces the floor waiting for the doctor to return after a loved one’s surgery. Perhaps he just needed to see that life still existed beyond the walls. Perhaps….perhaps….

Who was Thomas anyway? Though not often mentioned by name in the gospels, we have heard enough to know what distinguished him from all the other disciples. He was the one who understood what was coming. Among the followers of Jesus, those twelve named as apostles very early in Jesus’ ministry, Thomas was outspoken in his belief in Jesus’ mission, not brash or impulsive like Peter, but strong and assured.

In the days before Jesus’ passion, at the healing of Lazarus, Jesus told his followers about his plan to go the Jerusalem and he spoke of the danger of doing so. It was Thomas among the twelve who urged the followers to go, “Even if we must die with him.” He had understood both the plan and the risk, and he was willing to follow.

Thomas knew about death, some might have called him a realist. He had anticipated Jesus’ death, what he didn’t anticipate or know in advance was how to come to terms with that reality when Jesus was gone and he remained. And he asked the question many have asked since, “How do we go on living when death is all around?”

As we hear the story one of the few that is told every year it seems different. It’s hard to know just where we fit into the story this time. Do we identify with the disciples, shut up behind locked doors in fear? Or are we like Thomas feeling guilty, unsettled, and uncertain? Maybe we’re a bit like Thomas and the rest of the disciples.

We look out from our shuttered homes, seeing the ill, and the brave, and the foolhardy. We hear the news of those who taunt fate, who laugh in the face of the risk. We listen well to the warnings, taking them seriously for the sake of the future, of our children and grandchildren, and for ourselves. We see the ones who can’t stay home, those who work at jobs providing the most essential needs of society, and we see those who have no safe home or lack the necessary supplies.

We may like Thomas feel unsettled at what we see and what we imagine to be going on beyond our closed doors. It may be hard for us to wait quietly while the world is in chaos outside.

I remember my training and hear the oft-repeated instructions for chaplains and ministers who are told to provide a non-anxious presence. In this time of isolation and social distancing, we all need someone to calm our fears. How can one be non-anxious in this time of great loss and uncertainty? How can we sit in stillness when there are so many struggling?

And then we hear the words of Thomas’ encounter with Jesus. In awe, we hear Jesus welcome, even anticipate, the questions. “Come and witness my wounds and know that I am with you. In the scars of my suffering and death see that even now I am with you in life.”

It is hard, no it is impossible, my friends, to see the path that is before us. But we know this, that Jesus’ call for us to care for one another continues, and he promises to be with us in the process. Even as we sit in stillness, in prayer, standing vigil as many suffer. Knowing that those who live crowded in cramped living quarters suffer more illness and death and that those who must work are indeed at risk. It is right for us to be keeping watch. As we hold vigil for them and for the world, as we care for one another to limit the scope of the crisis, let us also reflect on how we live now and in the future. I believe even now God is bringing forth new life in us. Let us imagine how we will live into a future that values everyone. Let us remember that Jesus is with us, bearing with us the pain of the world and speaking to us those words for which we hunger, “Peace be with you.“

From the beginning, God called us into relationship with the divine, with our neighbor, and also with the heavens, seas, mountains, and forests, and all that live there. Isaiah invites us to look to creation, to observe in God’s handiwork the possibility for peace that encompasses all creation.

Hear the words of Isaiah 55: 8-13 (NRSV)

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher than your waysand my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,and do not return there until they have watered the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,and be led back in peace;the mountains and the hills before youshall burst into song,and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

I invite you now into a time of meditation and reflection. Perhaps the past few days have been frenetic. Your to-do list has kept you inside, removed from the beauty of the outdoors. Today with a still heart you feel deep gratitude for this time set aside for personal renewal and consider how we will protect the fragile and wondrous gift that supports the life God created.

Make yourself comfortable. You may want to close your eyes. With your feet on the floor, relax your body from your toes, to your midsection and then to your face. Breathe deeply of the spirit of God that moves in and around you and release all tension as we imagine a walk in God’s garden.

You have come to this favorite space many times before. Checking your small pack, you prepare to set out with a bottle of cool water and a snack…. Ahead of you a trail beckons. The day is warm as sunlight floods the forest. Overhead, the forest has only begun its springtime transformation from its winter skeletal forms to lush summer canopy. Tiny chartreuse leaves begin to fill the once empty space.

Along the wooded path, you note branches felled by some storm several years past. Now they show evidence of change and decay that supports the new growth on the forest floor where bits of moss are turning green and a new seedling has taken root. Even with just two leaves showing, the seedling will compete with older stronger saplings nearby. Here and there trillium and Dutchman’s breeches flower, intent on gathering strength for another season of growth, their hope to propagate and sustain their species for another generation in this fertile biome.

At long last, you come to your favorite spot, one to which you return at different seasons, year after year. Sometimes the small spring-fed stream swells with the runoff of snow-melt or a summer rain. Today its mere trickle of water from the spring bubbles gently along. You rest your pack against the trunk of an old oak and sit listening.

Other notes fall on your ear… the melody of birdsong and a rustling of leaves in the underbrush as a squirrel scampers across an open space and up a maple. It occurs to you to wonder what the future holds for wild places such as this. You reach into your pack and celebrate a quiet communion with the forest flora and fauna grateful for their presence and their gifts to the cycle of life God created.

As you prepare to leave the forest now, you open your eyes, your mind, your heart and consider how your appreciation for these woodland spaces has led you to respond to the call to stewardship of God’s great gift.

Once again you hear the words of Isaiah…. sharing their earnest hope for many seasons of joyful celebration of all creation.

He must have known or suspected what was coming. He’d been hearing opposition from the very beginning. He knew about John’s run-in with Roman leaders. He himself had fielded all sorts of questions from leaders of the temple; from those who were afraid, who perhaps felt threatened, just trying to protect the people, paying the bills, putting food on their own tables. They worried, he knew. He timed his entry as a protest. Echoing the scriptures, his preparations were planned to help the people remember the words of the prophets. Remember that there was hope to stand against the mighty and the powerful who abused their power.

Think about the people on that day…

They must have known or suspected what was to come. They knew all too well the might of their Roman occupiers. They could hear the clatter of horses’ hooves and chariot wheels from across the city. They knew the oppressive taxes that funded Herod’s many castles. Lifestyles of the rich and famous did not just originate in our day. It’s been a theme running throughout history.

In spite of knowing, of harboring a fear of what might come, the people joined with Jesus and his disciples making noise, celebrating in the streets of Jerusalem, bringing joy tempered by fear, but choosing hope, however slim, that somehow their day was coming.

Looking back they may have wondered at their brash parade. Just how had they expected the ragtag crowd of followers that they were to succeed in the face of such a mighty obstacle? But in the years to come, the parade would take on new meaning. Their hopes of one who would be present in challenging times would be realized in countless ways great and small.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead said, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Today, we face a mighty threat. It is made evident in the face of a global pandemic. But it has shown its face in opportunists who use the suffering of others to their advantage for fame or power or profit.

But there is another way…the voice of the people lifted up in celebrating the heroes among us; the health care workers and support teams, those who provide transportation of people to hospitals, of food to market, those who deliver mail and babies. In places around the world people under stay at home orders gather nightly on balconies to cheer their heroes, medical staff applaud as those who recover are sent home, restaurants whose business is floundering turn instead to sending food to those on the front lines in hospitals or deliver food and beverages to police and ambulance corps.

And in this community of faith, the work of caring for one another goes on. Your Leadership Circle and those who make telephone contact check-in weekly so we can continue to meet the needs of the people in this time and place.

What will people say of us in that far distant time when COVID 19 is but a memory? They will say that the people followed faithfully in the way of Jesus shouting out their hopes, and yes, their fears. They will say the people trusted in God knowing that in this community of faith, whatever comes, God will be present in the work in the hands and feet, hearts and faces of those who gather here in God’s name. May it ever be so.